The 3rd Universal Cup Semifinals successfully concluded, and the final standings have been announced¶

The 3rd Universal Cup Semifinals were held smoothly. The official contest took place on August 24, 19:00–24:00 (Beijing time), followed by the Closing Ceremony on August 25, 19:30–21:00 (Beijing time), where the results were officially revealed. This event was sponsored by Huawei and ZhenFund.

Contest Summary¶

This year’s contest attracted more than 250 teams from around the world. From high school students that have competed in the IOI to university students who have won medals and championships at the ICPC World Finals, to senior engineers at the cutting edge of AI development—many of the world’s most renowned legends participated. The contest, prepared by the Universal Cup Scientific Committee, included thirteen problems in total. 11 of the 13 problems were solved by at least one team - problems B and K went unsolved. With excellent problems and outstanding contestants, the competition achieved both high spectator value and strong differentiation. The winning team solved 11 problems; in total, 181 teams solved at least one problem, with 7 teams solving 9 problems, 11 teams solving 8 problems, 18 teams solving 7 problems, and 29 teams solving 6 problems.

The top-performing teams will be invited to the Universal Cup Finals (see last season’s Finals post for reference). Teams ranking at the top should stay tuned for official announcements.

In this contest, the championship was claimed by "USA1", led by Gennady Korotkevich (three-time IOI champion with six golds, two-time ICPC champion, eight-time Google Code Jam champion). His teammate Andrew He is a senior engineer at Cognition Labs, the company behind Devin, the recently trending AI Software Engineer, and together with Kevin Sun, placed 2nd in the 2019 ICPC World Finals. Counting last year’s semifinals, and this year’s Finals earlier in February, this marks the team’s third victory in a premier Universal Cup event, winning by a two-problem lead—once again demonstrating their overwhelming strength.

Among the top ten, Japan’s all-star team "HoMaMaOvO", consisting of Riku Kawasaki, Masaki Nishimoto, and Yui Hosaka, delivered another outstanding performance. These members have all won medals in IOI, ICPC, and IMO, and are frequent champions in UCup’s weekly contests. They had also secured bronze in both last year’s Semifinals and Finals.

The Polish all-star team "Polish Mafia", composed of Wojtek Nadara, Mateusz Radecki, and Marcin Smulewicz, placed 6th in the Semifinals. Wojtek is a PhD in theoretical computer science, and Mateusz is a Distributed Code Jam champion and ICPC World Finals gold medalist. Their team previously won second place in last season’s Semifinals and fourth place in the Finals.

This year’s 9th place went to "FreakPlus", a solo team led by the newly crowned IOI Champion Hengxi Liu. Back in February, he also took home a bronze medal in the 2025 Universal Cup Finals as a solo contestant finishing 8th.

Other notable results included some familiar names: "arvin and errogame" led by renowned competitor Harris Leung, claimed 3rd place; "Hardworking Learners", a team of three high school students, placed 4th; Tokyo Tech’s ICPC World Finals gold medalists "tonosama" placed 6th; ICPC World Champion Aleksei Daniliuk and his former teammates’ team "Almost Retired Dandelion" placed 7th; Princeton’s "We Play with Mud in the Northeast" took 8th; and Peking University’s "fans of pkufrank" rounded out the top 10.

Highlights¶

At the Closing Ceremony, Co-president Dr. Jingbang Chen delivered the opening remarks, reflecting on the Universal Cup's half-year journey of growth and challenges, particularly the transformative impact of AI and its fairness concerns. He outlined improvements in contest organization and system infrastructure, expressed gratitude to sponsors and staff, and officially announced the start of preparations for the Finals.

Emma Yin from ZhenFund then shared the story and investment philosophy of ZhenFund.

Pengpeng Zheng, an LLM expert from Huawei, introduced the technical challenges of complex mathematical problem-solving in Huawei’s Xiaoyi agents.

Finally, Co-President Qingyu Shi, on behalf of the Universal Cup, delivered a summary of the contest and hosted the thrilling and intense scoreboard reveal. As the results were unveiled step by step, the atmosphere of the entire event reached its climax. Afterwards, Qingyu, on behalf of the Scientific Committee, expressed gratitude and thanks to all judges and staff who contributed by submitting problems, preparing tasks, and testing the contest. He then announced further updates regarding the Finals and the 4th Universal Cup.

Acknowledgments¶

We sincerely thank Huawei and ZhenFund for their strong support of this event, as well as for the inspiring and insightful sharing they brought.

The successful hosting of this contest was also made possible through the promotion and support of many parties. In particular, we are grateful to the Petrozavodsk Training Camp in Russia for coordinating schedules, actively encouraging teams to participate in the Semifinals, and thoughtfully providing printing services for the contestants.

We hereby express our heartfelt gratitude!

The 3rd Universal Cup Semifinals have now come to a successful close. Preparations for the 3rd Universal Cup Finals are officially underway. We hope for your continued support and look forward to seeing you all at the next event.

Speech by Dr. Jingbang Chen, Co-President of the Universal Cup

Welcome to the Closing Ceremony of the 3rd Universal Cup Semifinals. Before the official results are announced, please allow me to take a moment to share some thoughts from organizing this event. The last time we met was in February at the Finals in Dongguan. Since then, the Universal Cup has not been content with ourselves. After listening to feedback and suggestions, we have continued moving forward and making progress. Half a year has flown by. Yet within these six months, both the world at large and our programming competition community have undergone changes far beyond what we could have imagined.

Whether we admit it or not, the transformative era of AI has indeed arrived. On one hand, AI has truly become a powerful assistant in problem solving—helping us quickly form algorithmic ideas and efficiently complete code implementation. On the other hand, we have also seen an explosive rise of integrity issues caused by the misuse of AI, which violates the very principles of fair competition. And perhaps an even more fundamental question arises: if AI’s problem-solving ability has already reached, or even surpassed, that of our very best contestants... then what does that mean for the very existence of algorithmic competitions?

Such a profound question may require long periods of discussion, and exploration. Yet for the Universal Cup, our answer has never wavered—clear and resolute: we devote ourselves to building the community, to consolidating and organizing resources, precisely because of our deep love for algorithmic competitions and our unwavering belief in their enduring value.

But passion alone is not enough—it must be matched with concrete actions. To serve the community more professionally and more efficiently, we expanded our team and restructured our organization. In this Semifinal, the Scientific Committee, the Technical Committee, and the Organizing Committee each carried out their responsibilities, working hand in hand to ensure the smooth preparation of the contest. We also formed a brand-new professional livestreaming team, who have successfully delivered both the in-contest coverage and the Closing Ceremony broadcast. Looking ahead, they will continue to take part in livestreaming and promotion for our major events.

During the season-off, our system underwent an upgrade. Starting from the next season, each team account will be linked with its member accounts, making it easier to adjust the team composition in cases of member substitution or absence. Through these efforts, we aim to ensure that team participation information remains clear and accurate, and that the contest itself stays fair and transparent. We will also continue to improve the quality of our contests, especially the rated ones. We also plan to refine the rating formula so that it better reflects the true performance of each team.

Regarding the use of AI, we are currently formulating detailed regulations, which are expected to be announced at the start of the new season later this year. Our goal is to ensure the highest level of fairness in the contests, keeping the core of programming competitions focused on experience, problem-solving thinking, and coding skills, so that all participating teams can enjoy the challenge on an equal footing.

Looking back on our journey, the Universal Cup would not have reached where it is today without your recognition and the support from many sides. We are deeply grateful to our sponsors, Huawei and ZhenFund, for their support, and we also sincerely thank everyone who proactively helped promote this contest. I would also like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt thanks to all the staff of this Semifinal for your hard work and dedication.

Next, we have some exciting content sharing from Huawei and ZhenFund, followed by the announcement of the contest results. We hope you enjoy this Closing Ceremony. After the event, we also welcome your feedback to help us improve even further.

Finally, there is one more thing. Although it may seem obvious to many of you, I would like to take this opportunity to make it official: the 3rd Universal Cup Finals are now officially in preparation—stay tuned!

Thank you!